First, there was gerrymandering. Then there was hackable, rigged voting machines. Everyone please watch this. And then look up Interstate Cross-Check, which is the latest way the Republicans have stolen our elections. Our rigged voting machines: https://t.co/nb1JwbrqsI
❗️Putin is approaching his downfall, — Forbes
Over the past century, the Russian Empire and the USSR have collapsed precisely because of failed foreign military campaigns.
Against the backdrop of conscript raids and fuel shortages, Russian elites are beginning to panic about their salvation.
🇬🇧 The British government has published a Defense Investment Plan. Its main philosophy is to abandon the old concepts of “expensive toys” in favor of the experience with which 🇺🇦Ukraine is destroying the Russian army, - Politico
➡️ The Royal Navy will no longer receive funding for the development of up to eight Type 83 destroyers and Type 32 frigates. The war in Ukraine has proven that huge and expensive ships are vulnerable.
➡️ Instead of floating fortresses, Britain is investing in at least 6 command ships. They will coordinate swarms of underwater hunter drones, unmanned missile platforms and air sensors.
➡️ The government allocates £5 billion exclusively for the “drone transformation”
➡️ The UK will create Europe’s largest UAV testing center and a special group for continuous scaling of production.
➡️ The Royal Air Force is launching a program of autonomous jets that will fly as robot companions alongside manned fighter jets.
🇺🇦😢 #NoPeaceWithoutJustice
The UN has confirmed 129 executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian forces since 2022, including cases where detainees were no longer taking part in combat.
Almost all released prisoners reported torture and ill-treatment, and cases of sexual violence were also recorded.
The report also details human rights violations in the temporarily occupied territories, including arbitrary detention, forced mobilization, and the imposition of Russian education systems.
🇭🇺Hungary’s new Prime Minister Péter Magyar is saying that the former PM Viktor Orban cheated on Hungary’s budget numbers.
No wonder Hungary has the highest borrowing costs in 🇪🇺EU, and is spending almost 5% of GDP only on servicing interest on its public debt.
The country is also projected to have some of the highest budget deficits in EU (more than 7%), alongside 🇷🇴Romania and 🇵🇱Poland.
Hungary sovereign credit rating has been sitting in the 'BBB' tier for years.
Economic growth has practically stopped after 2022, despite the government spending.
What is the best way for Hungary to boost the economy, while regaining markets’ and credit rating agencies’ trust:
A) Deregulation / reduction of the role of state in the economy;
B) Fiscal discipline / austerity;
C) Lax fiscal policy and more borrowing to stimulate economic growth;
D) Other?
The US ambassador to Belgium had Belgian police remove two journalists from a public event after they asked uncomfortable questions.
The event, organized by the Trump-aligned Freedom 250 initiative, was meant to celebrate American values such as freedom of speech.
Oh, the irony.
True underground Russian opposition has infiltrated Russia's massive Alabuga drone production operations, working inside for months, copying all its servers, now making all sensitive technological and staff information available.
Russia is actively planning a false flag operation in Poland, Finland, or one of the Baltic states. It is expected to take place in the coming months.
The goal is to test NATO's and the EU's unity while shifting attention away from Russia's failures in Ukraine and domestic problems.
SitRep - 28/06/26 - Drones hit the Slavyansk refinery
An overview of the daily events in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian long-range drones struck the Slavyansk EKO refinery in Slavyansk-on-Kuban, Krasnodar Territory, setting it on fire.
REPOST=appreciated
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🇫🇷🇪🇺 Macron has instructed his administration to find additional ways to collect EU-wide taxes from foreign companies.
According to Politico, these funds are planned to finance the next €2 trillion EU budget.
Paris is pushing Brussels to raise more funds through EU-wide levies on American tech giants and foreign polluters, rather than relying on increased contributions from national governments.
The European Parliament in May proposed new levies on cryptocurrency companies, digital giants, and online gambling. France and Spain tentatively supported these ideas.
Furthermore, according to two EU diplomats, France is informally testing the waters for tougher climate commitments for foreign airlines.
🇵🇱🇺🇦 PM Tusk: All of us here, but also everyone in Poland, everyone in Ukraine and in Europe, believe that Ukraine will withstand Russian aggression and that our plans for rebuilding Ukraine are not a mirage.
When we say 'together we will rebuild the destroyed Ukrainian cities after the war,' we say it because we believe it will be after the war — that it will happen, and soon, and that it is possible thanks to our solidarity.
Ukraine — and rightly so — wants to be part of a united Europe.
We have all heard about unicorns, the $1 billion startups.
The new term in town: “zombie unicorns”.
Overvalued, overambitious, and underperforming - theses startups are burning through billions of venture capital money. But it seems like the tide is turning.
332 of the 1,900 unicorns in a database maintained by Stanford University had raised money at a valuation at or below their peak.
Of those, 212 were valued already at under $1bn. As many as 383 had disclosed no new funding in the previous three years; 41 of these had lost the unicorn status.
Too expensive to let go, too inefficient to bet on more …
Is the inefficient capital distribution in startups - going to be the source of the next crisis?
🚨 BREAKING:
World-renowned US rapper Kendrick Lamar:
"Donald Trump is a narcissist who runs a country built on fear and division, trampling over democratic values; you either stand for equality and the truth, or you are part of this climate of hate."
@MikeLevin@judystout1 Wow.
Mike Levin:
“Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.”
This needs to become a rallying cry!
Let me tell you what just got reported, because you will not believe it until you see it laid out.
The Trump administration cut a billion-dollar tungsten deal with Kazakhstan. Tungsten is the metal we need for missile warheads, fighter jets, and computer chips. Trump himself got on the phone to close it. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick worked it from the inside, sending letters, leaning on the Kazakh president, lining up as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing.
Within weeks of those negotiations, investors tied to a firm partly owned by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump took a 20% stake in an entity connected to the very same Kazakhstan project their father was negotiating. Around that same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm run by Lutnick’s own sons, raised $210 million for a partner in the deal and pocketed the fees.
The fathers set the policy. The sons cashed in.
Six days after the Trump sons and their partners moved their money, Lutnick signed the final deal.
The reporting found one or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies working with the government on critical mining deals.
The total federal funding flowing toward those companies tops $8.9 billion.
This is your tax money.
It is supposed to secure our supply chains and protect our troops, not pad the portfolios of the President’s children and the Commerce Secretary’s children.
This is the most corrupt administration in American history. It is not close.
We must keep digging, and keep asking the questions they do not want asked. Republicans in Congress are unwilling to lift a finger. Mike Johnson is running a protection racket.
Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.
https://t.co/yFOl7zvOhC
84 year old Joe Biden dropped the biggest bombshell on Trump 🔥
🇺🇸 Biden: "Look, It’s not just that he’s tearing NATO apart and picking Putin over our allies, or that he’s made us look worse globally than any president before.
Dude’s acting like Putin wrote his script. " 🔥
He indirectly called him Moscow’s asset 🔥💪
A foreign oil giant was under fire from the Trump White House for buying Russian oil. Then it poured nine figures into a troubled refinery startup tied to Donald Trump Jr. Not long after, the pressure from the Trump Administration vanished.
Donald Trump sold it as a win for America. But the real winner was his family.
This is pay to play at the highest levels of government. Welcome to Episode 19 of the Corruption Chronicles.
Russian government has been hit by a double whammy, forced to boost crude exports just as prices tumble following the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, due to sustained 🇺🇦Ukrainian drone strikes on key facilities reducing its refining throughput.
Russia is exporting crude oil at its fastest pace this year as repeated Ukrainian drone strikes on domestic refineries leave Moscow increasingly unable to process its own production.
Russian crude exports averaged 3.89mn barrels per day over the latest four-week period, the highest level recorded this year, as damaged refineries forced producers to divert more unprocessed crude onto international markets.
Russia’s refining volumes are down 13.5% year-on-year after Ukraine escalated its drone strikes on production facilities.
The surge in export volumes, however, has failed to translate into higher revenues, just as the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz has caused the price of oil to tumble to $72.
Russian government is reportedly considering a complete ban on diesel exports and may extend existing restrictions on gasoline and aviation fuel shipments in an effort to secure domestic supplies.
🇺🇸US sanctions on Russian oil appear to be back at the same time, as the US waiver on Russian sanctions expired a few days ago.
Will the Russian domestic fuel shortages, lesser oil revenues, and the expected budget deficit this year translate into a reduced pace of attacks on Ukraine:
A) Yes;
B) No?